i'm feeling boaty

Pump up the romance

Good god, now I’ve written that, a drunken conversation from Saturday night about testicles being used as – no, I don’t think I do want to start the post like that, you’re right. I’ll start again.

You know, I realise, before now, I’ve been a little dismissive of the Feast of St Valentine – along with the rest of weblogging community and, in fact, almost anyone employed to write for a national newspaper. But now I realise I was wrong. We were all wrong. Valentines day is a great, great thing. A day to celebrate romance! A day enshrouded in all things Cupid! How better to display your unique and individual love for your No, I’m sorry, i can’t do it. I’ll start again.

…

Incidentally – in case I didn ‘t mention it (I didn’t mention it) – I ran away to Scotland for the weekend. To the Western Isles, in fact. It’s a long way.

And so, from here on in – and I realise that a lot of the big attraction to many women about Valentines Day is the sheer quality and scope of the oneupmanship possible (‘A single red rose? Aw, how frugal your husband is. I got four HUNDRED red roses.’ ‘Four Hundred? Really? How cliched. My husband reanimated Elvis’ corpse to sing to me in the bath…’) I would like to point out that – in the interests of pure unadulterated oneupmanship – my Valentines Day was longer than ALL’a Y’alls Put Together. Oh yeah. So Much Longer. We were travelling, in fact, for over 17 hours, all the way from waking up way pre-dawn, clambouring on the schoolbus in a windswept island village, through the worst timetable glitch in the world ever, to a delayed plane and a dead mouse. Did you have so long a Valentines day? Jealous?

Yes, you’re Jealous.

etc.

I shall be sleeping today. And some of tomorrow, but writing and sleeping is the plan overall. And valentines schmalentines to all. It’s a silly day anyway.

But, but…

But on the tube home, as my beloved and I slipped further and further into a zombified stupor, clinging on to each other, with welltimed sharp elbows every now and again to keep alert, well-dressed couples piled onto the tube train, clutching their Musical programmes (I mean programmes FOR musicals, not ones that play tunes. Although that would be pretty cool). They looked happy, in a Valentines kind of way, tied-on foil helium hearts bouncing off the carriage roof in the same rhythm that was rocking me to sleep, and each woman with a single RosefertheLady sticking out of her dress handbag. Hormone-heavy and homeward bound, each couple swapped glances every now and again, fuzzing and buzzily. I hope it isn’t the only time each year those people look at each other that way.